


Fixing

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Botany, Gen, Ladies who love botany, ladies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:41:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles wanted his son to be an officer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixing

**Author's Note:**

> For cosmic-llin.

"Are you Beverly Crusher?"

Beverly looked up, and then down at her desk, and then up. The lights were dimming automatically with the artificial twilight. The woman at the threshold looked uncomfortable in the half-light. “If I’m interrupting…”

"Uh, no." Beverly stood up and felt the knots in her muscles uncurl. "I was - well. Engrossed in my work. Can I help you?"

The woman smiled. “I’m here to say thank you,” she said, quietly. “For what you’ve done for my boy.”

Beverly said, “Computer, lights” - and figured it out. “You’re Kirayoshi’s mother.”

"Keiko O’Brien," she said, "you can call me Keiko"- but Beverly couldn’t meet her eyes, suddenly, and said, "The garden."

"Excuse me?"

"Just outside" - now confusedly - "it’s dark but there’s lights. I mean. We could talk more easily there. If you want."

Keiko followed Beverly obligingly out into the corridor, away from the lab and into the green, and they got to the first bench, wrought iron wound by stray honeysuckle, before she said, “I feel like I make you uncomfortable, Dr. Crusher.”

"Me!" Beverly said, sitting down gingerly, away from the blooms. It was a clear night, warm with scent. "I thought…" She paused. "I heard," she said, delicately, "that Chief O’Brien wasn’t pleased, when his son dropped out of the Academy."

"He wasn’t," Keiko said, composedly, "but he got over it. Dr. Crusher," she said, with urgency, "Yoshi doesn’t remember Deep Space Nine, but _I_ do. I remember him toddling after me around the arboretums, tasting every leaf. When we went back to Earth I couldn’t get him to come inside for three days and I never got the dirt out from his little fingernails. By the time he was ten he had half my garden under his thumb. And then he was eighteen, and Miles wanted his son to be an officer.”

"Ah," Beverly said, and sighed. "For what it’s worth, I thought Kirayoshi was very gifted. I knew of his mother by repute" - a small smile - "and to be honest, I was just surprised he wasn’t already thinking of specialising in the sciences. He could go to Betazed with Starfleet; they need terraformers there. I wasn’t expecting him to…"

Keiko laughed. “Storm out of his classes, inform us he was enrolling at the UC Berkeley department of exobotany and Molly could damn well be command track.”

"Well, yes."

Keiko shook her head and laughed again. “All of you, just the same,” she pronounced. “Yoshi can go to Betazed. Odo’s friend Lwaxana will look out for him there. There are other ways of doing things than Starfleet.”

Beverly leaned back on the bench, suddenly, and the flowers crushed beneath her released their sweetness. “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “Yes, I suppose there are.” And then, surprised at herself for confiding to a near-stranger, “But it’s been - it’s been my whole life.”

Keiko smiled at her then, a small smile with a wealth of understanding behind it. “I hope Molly does get her own command,” she said, very gently. “And I hope my boy takes good care of his flowers, and remembers to fix his nitrates.” She stopped for a moment, and then went on. “He was born in a war.”

Beverly shivered a little, although the night was warm. “There’s tea in my office,” she said, “jasmine, and green leaves. Let me get some for us.”

"Thank you," Keiko said, again, and Beverly thought, as she stood up, that she was being thanked for something more than this.


End file.
